Japan's Subarau Observatory (l) and one of the twin Keck observatory domes line a ridge atop Mauna Kea, widely considered to be the best spot on the planet for ground-based astronomy. A dwarf galaxy was observed recently using data gathered at the Keck Observatory.

Scientists have been searching the skies for dwarf galaxies – faint, ancient clumps of stars that merged early in the universe's history to form large galaxies such as the Milky Way.

Theory says lots of these dwarfs should still be around, like collections of spare parts, orbiting larger galaxies. But too few have appeared in astronomers' telescopes to match the theory.

Now, a team of astronomers reports that it has detected a dwarf galaxy orbiting an enormous elliptical galaxy some 10 billion light-years away.

This munchkin is the most distant dwarf galaxy yet discovered, and weighs in at an estimated 113 million times the mass of the sun – middling for a dwarf galaxy.

Researchers found it by detecting its gravitational influence on light from an even more-distant object – a result some astrophysicists call the first convincing evidence that this approach works for finding dwarf galaxies across such vast expanses of space.

The discovery, reported in the Jan. 19 issue of the journal Nature, shows that the process, known as gravitational lensing, "is going to be important as we try to flush this problem out," says James Bullock, an astrophysicist specializing in galaxy evolution at the University of California at Irvine.